No offense, but why not use Zbrush's prepackaged retopology tools? :/ I think it would make the process faster and less complicated than taking it into 3DS Max, it does for me when I'm using Zbrush/Blender.

Its very easy,just insert a zsphere inside the model mesh,scale it down inside the mesh.With the zsphere still selected in the subtools palette,go the topology pallete and click edit topology,if u need more info on the tabs and what they do in topology pallette,just hover ur mouse over it and press ctrl button,a small window will pop up explaining it.Thats how I have been able to learn most of zbrush features which are all over the place.

Yup - I have since, actually done this on my own, so yeah - I did finally bother to figure it out. lol It really is quite nice, actually, and might consider using it in the future for retopo-ing stuff, but some of the stuff I do retopology for requires a number of extra steps for specific work-related reasons that mandate using 3dsmax's tool instead.

So roughly how many of the triangles get removed after decimation in terms of percent? I know it's variable but i'm wondering how far you can go before it starts looking bad. There's a cool maxscript that allows you to reverse sub-d levels on any collapsed quad mesh. It's not exactly the same as this but still pretty useful.

Athey, seeing this stuff always makes me jealous. If I wanted to go through half the crap in life that you had to to get to where you are..I would. And I mean that in a good way lol, so hopefully you don't take offense to it. Cause, I know with college and then the jobs after that, life wasn't kind to you at first, and wasn't the kindest to you for a bit after that either (not sure how it is now, I need to read your journals x.x).

But yeah, I'm envious of the stuff you get to do and get to work with. Not like you need a degree (or maybe you do) to use this program but yeah lmao, I'd have no idea, I can barely use PSP lol.

I wouldn't have the patience for all this though I think it's amazing. I'd love to be able to make stuff, especially in regards to my own characters.